Latin American Short Stories

Set in Northern New Mexico, an astonishing, beautifully rendered debut about living in a landscape shaped by love, loss, and violence. With intensity, dark humor, and emotional precision, Kirstin Valdez Quade's unforgettable stories plunge us into the fierce, troubled hearts of characters torn between their desires to escape the past and to plumb its depths.

The first person in her traditional Mexican American family to graduate from high school, Katia is entering adulthood at a time of turbulent change. Across the nation young people are fighting for civil and women’s rights and protesting the Vietnam War and brutal dictatorships in South America. Like so many of her generation, Katia wants to make the world a better place, and is determined to follow her own path.

An early desktop computer becomes the third partner in a doomed relationship; an older brother figure whose father lives in exile imparts hilarious life lessons to his young protégé. A man attempts to quit smoking despite the fact that he’s very good at it; another masquerades as the family man he'll never be. Throughout, Pinochet’s dictatorship casts a long shadow, and men in relationships exhibit their profound capacity for both love and harm.

Profoundly moving and powerful, the stories in this collection dig deeply into the question of belonging. A young woman is torn between overwhelming love for her mother and the need to break free from her damaging influence during a desperate and disastrous attempt to rescue her brother from foster care. A man, his wife, and his mistress each confront the borders separating love and hate, obligation and longing, on the eve of a flight to San Juan. A college student grapples with the space between chivalry and machismo in a tense encounter involving a nun.

Examining the borders between one nation and another, between one person and another, Urrea reveals his mastery of the short form. This collection includes the Edgar-award winning "Amapola" and his now-classic "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," which had the honor of being chosen for NPR's "Selected Shorts" not once but twice.

The first ever collection of short stories by Jaime Cortez, Gordo is set in a migrant workers camp near Watsonville, California, in the 1970s.

Oscar Casares' debut collection of short stories was selected as an ALA Notable book and received tremendous praise from publications ranging from the New York Times and the Washington Post to Entertainment Weekly. These nine stories follow a collection of unforgettable characters trying to get by while living in the South Texas border town of Brownsville.

Rosalinda Alameda adores zoos. When Massachusetts's summertime "Free Fridays" promotion features the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, Rosalinda grabs her camera and heads east. A full day among lions and tigers is about the best outing she can possibly imagine.

Rosalinda Alameda is celebrating her first year anniversary working at the Stone Zoo in Stoneham, Massachusetts. She is talking with her beloved mother, who still lives in Puerto Rico. Everything is going just perfectly. But then her world turns completely upside-down, and everything she holds dear is threatened. The Flustered Flamingo is the 10th book in the Rosalinda Alameda Mystery series. These short stories feature the zoos that Rosalinda loves with a passion. Author Lisa Shea goes to each zoo personally to write up its sights, sounds, and aromas.

A collection of humorous, sexy, and highly neurotic tales about parenting, long-term relationships, systemic and interpersonal racism, and class conflict from the author of The Town of Babylon, The People Who Report More Stress deftly and poignantly expresses the frustration of knowing the problems and solutions to our society’s inequities but being unable to do anything about them.

Katia, la primera en su tradicional familia mexicoestadounidense en terminar la secundaria, entra a la edad adulta en una época de cambios turbulentos. En todo el país, los jóvenes luchan por los derechos civiles y de las mujeres, y protestan contra la Guerra de Vietnam y las brutales dictaduras de América del Sur. Como muchos de su generación, Katia quiere hacer del mundo un lugar mejor y está decidida a seguir su propio camino.

Rosalinda and her new friends strolled through the 1830s-era 200-acre expanse which was Old Sturbride Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Normally this was an oasis of calm. But because this was the last Free Friday of the summer, it seemed that every child in the region had descended to explore and enjoy. When the group decides to hide out in the farm area, where things might be quieter, they discover a mystery instead!

Though the lives of Mexico's characters are effected by the corrupt and dangerous subculture of their country, these are much more than simple "crime stories". They are complicated and deeply moving tales that tap into universal and enduringly powerful themes: love and loss, religion, family relationships, government abuse, sexual identity, professional ambition, cancer; they introduce us to characters that feel fully realized in their humanity.

"El elogio de la nieve" es un cuento de Hugo Burel que obtuvo el Premio Juan Rulfo de Radio Francia Internacional en 1995. En el texto, Burel realiza una reflexión colectiva sobre Uruguay y los uruguayos a través de una reunión de varios tertulianos en un café de Montevideo. Los personajes discuten la posibilidad de que esa noche caiga nieve sobre la ciudad. Sin embargo, su conversación aparentemente encierra un profundo estudio tanto de la identidad del país del autor.

Álex Ayala escribe acerca de unos jubilados que cumplen heroicamente su última misión en la vida: vigilar una estatua de John Lennon para que nadie robe sus características gafas. Y también lo hace sobre los habitantes de un pueblo de Bolivia que comercian con sus recuerdos sobre las últimas horas de vida del Che Guevara. En otro capítulo se habla del sastre Sillerico, quien ha gozado del dudoso honor de ver en paños menores a la mayoría de los presidentes de su país.

Este libro es la primera publicación en el género narrativo del autor y recopila cuentos y microcuentos, cuya temática común es el erotismo. El erotismo humano es considerado un tema fundamental de la literatura a lo largo de toda la historia de la humanidad. Para algunos, incluso, constituye un género o subgénero en las letras. Este texto incluye historias censurables, lujuriosas y que de otro modo debieran quedarse en el silencio o en el secreto más arcano.

This tender love ballad is set deep in the jungles of Mexico and tells the story of Victoriano and Mira Bella, a young couple madly in love with "enormous proliferations of passion". Laid out in colorful, poetic text with a creative ending told in two letters - one written by Victoriano, the other written by an American artist visiting their beautiful world.

One of Oscar Wilde's best-loved short stories, which includes romance, love, and murder. The discussion of murder is light-hearted and witty, in typical Wilde fashion. A must listen for fans of the author.

The veil between the living and the dead is obscured, chaos becomes panacea, and characters take drastic measures into their own hands. Survivors of all kinds seek strategy and solace: a group of homeless people organize an occupation of vacant condos, a new resident to a disturbing neighbourhood tries to make sense of madness, a dog investigates the sudden disappearance of his owner. The five intertwined vignettes in the title story are set in a Caribbean country where the spectre of the sugar plantation haunts everyone.

Despite Carlos' mundane life, killing weeds for his father's rich customers, is billions of miles from the stars he observes in the night sky, or from the kids who sit in the canteen with their healthy sandwiches and bottled water. His life is a billion miles from their reality, and the reality of a stable life in America as he dreams of becoming a citizen. While their families provide them with nice clothes, large houses and cars to travel to school in, Carlos makes do with gas-fumed rags of clothes and a gap between his front teeth. In order to cope, he immerses himself in thoughts of the universe, and learns of black holes, gravity and the beguiling Casimir Effect.